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Collaboration has taken root in national forest planning, providing expanded opportunities for stakeholder participation in decision-making, but are these processes considered meaningful by key stakeholders? Do the processes result in increased participation by key stakeholders? We present results of a study of stakeholder perspectives of a collaborative planning process on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison National Forests in Western Colorado, U.S.A. The stakeholders were stratified by participation levels in order to explore a possible relationship between participation and perceptions of the collaborative process. We used a Q-methodology approach to compare and contrast perspectives across participant...
Wind energy offers the potential to reduce carbon emissions while increasing energy independence and bolstering economic development. However, wind energy has a larger land footprint per Gigawatt (GW) than most other forms of energy production, making appropriate siting and mitigation particularly important. Species that require large unfragmented habitats and those known to avoid vertical structures are particularly at risk from wind development. Developing energy on disturbed lands rather than placing new developments within large and intact habitats would reduce cumulative impacts to wildlife. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that it will take 241 GW of terrestrial based wind development on approximately...
If conservation of biodiversity is the goal, then the protected areas network of the continental US may be one of our best conservation tools for safeguarding ecological systems (i.e., vegetation communities). We evaluated representation of ecological systems in the current protected areas network and found insufficient representation at three vegetation community levels within lower elevations and moderate to high productivity soils. We used national-level data for ecological systems and a protected areas database to explore alternative ways we might be able to increase representation of ecological systems within the continental US. By following one or more of these alternatives it may be possible to increase the...
A number of hemodynamic, pharmacologic and metabolic interventions were found to change the extent of acute ischemic injury of the myocardium and subsequent necrosis following experimental coronary artery occlusion. Reduction in myocardial damage occurred by decreasing myocardial oxygen demands (beta-adrenergic blocking agents, intra-aortic balloon counterpulsation, external counterpulsation, nitroglycerin, decreasing afterload in hypertensive patients, inhibition of lipolysis, and digitalis in the failing heart); by increasing myocardial oxygen supply either directly (coronary artery reperfusion or elevating arterial pO2), or through collateral vessels (elevation of coronary perfusion pressure by alpha-adrenergic...
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All data are provided in 30' latitude-longitude (i.e., 0.5° degree) gridded format in the Geographic projection. A full description of the data development is provided in the Supplementary Information available on the Nature website. Protecting the world’s freshwater resources requires diagnosing threats over a broad range of scales, from global to local. Here we present the first worldwide synthesis to jointly consider human and biodiversity perspectives on water security using a spatial framework that quantifies multiple stressors and accounts for downstream impacts. We find that nearly 80% of the world’s population is exposed to high levels of threat to water security. Massive investment in water technology...
A study using multiple techniques provided insight into tectonic influences on ground water systems; the results can help to understand ground water systems in the tectonically active western United States and other parts of the world. Ground water in the San Bernardino Valley (Arizona, United States and Sonora, Mexico) is the main source of water for domestic use, cattle ranching (the primary industry), and the preservation of threatened and endangered species. To improve the understanding of ground water occurrence, movement, and sustainability, an investigation was conducted using a number of complementary methods, including major ion geochemistry, isotope hydrology, analysis of gases dissolved in ground water,...
Protected areas are crucial for biodiversity conservation because they provide safe havens for species threatened by land-use change and resulting habitat loss. However, protected areas are only effective when they stop habitat loss within their boundaries, and are connected via corridors to other wild areas. The effectiveness of protected areas is threatened by development; however, the extent of this threat is unknown. We compiled spatially-detailed housing growth data from 1940 to 2030, and quantified growth for each wilderness area, national park, and national forest in the conterminous United States. Our findings show that housing development in the United States may severely limit the ability of protected...
Although cyclosporine has high specificity for the immune system, immunosuppressive therapy with CsA is often complicated by nephrotoxicity. The main morphologic targets of CsA nephrotoxicity include the tubular epithelial and endothelial cells. These cells were investigated in vitro. CsA caused a dose- and time-dependent inhibition of cell growth, vacuolization and fatty change in adherent cells, detachment, and cell death. Inhibition of 3H-TdR incorporation in cells of both tubular epithelial and endothelial origin occurred between 3 microM and 10 microM. Electron microscopy studies revealed cellular swelling, dilatation of the endoplasmic reticulum, and the presence of lipid droplets and giant mitochondria. The...
Global conservation prioritization usually emphasizes areas with highest species richness or where many species are thought to be at imminent risk of extinction. However, these strategies may overlook areas where many species have biological traits that make them particularly sensitive to future human impact but are not yet threatened because such impact is currently low. In this article, we identify such areas for the world's mammals using latent extinction risk, the discrepancy between a species' current extinction risk and that predicted from models on the basis of biological traits. Species with positive latent risk are currently less threatened than their biology would suggest, usually because they inhabit...
Conservation planning is the process of locating, configuring, implementing and maintaining areas that are managed to promote the persistence of biodiversity and other natural values. Conservation planning is inherently spatial. The science behind it has solved important spatial problems and increasingly influenced practice. To be effective, however, conservation planning must deal better with two types of change. First, biodiversity is not static in time or space but generated and maintained by natural processes. Second, humans are altering the planet in diverse ways at ever faster rates.
Protected areas cover over 12% of the terrestrial surface of Earth, and yet many fail to protect species and ecological processes as originally envisioned. Results of recent studies suggest that a critical reason for this failure is an increasing contrast between the protected lands and the surrounding matrix of often highly altered land cover. We measured the isolation of 114 protected areas distributed worldwide by comparing vegetation-cover heterogeneity inside protected areas with heterogeneity outside the protected areas. We quantified heterogeneity as the contagion of greenness on the basis of NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) values, for which a higher value of contagion indicates less heterogeneous...
Some animals have the cognitive capacity to differentiate between different species of predators and generate different alarm calls in response. However, the presence of any addition information that might be encoded into alarm calls has been largely unexplored. In the present study, three similar-sized human females walked through a Gunnison's prairie dog (Cynomys gunnisoni) colony wearing each of three different-colored shirts: blue, green, and yellow. We recorded the alarm calls and used discriminant function analysis to assess whether the calls for the different-colored shirts were significantly different. The results showed that the alarm calls for the blue and the yellow shirts were significantly different,...
Initial river rehabilitation efforts along the North Fork Gunnison River in Colorado focused on the use of in-stream structures and channel stabilization to create a single-thread channel with pools along a braided river. These efforts were based on the assumption that the river's braided planform results primarily from land use during the past century. In order to establish a context for further rehabilitation, we evaluated the possibility that the river might be braided as a result of processes independent of land use. We estimated volume, grain-size distribution, and lithology of sediment sources along the river corridor and evaluated the planform stability of the river during the past century using historical...
Soil treatment of wastewater has the potential to achieve high purification efficiency, yet the understanding and predictability of purification with respect to removal of viruses and other pathogens is limited. Research has been completed to quantify the removal of virus and bacteria through the use of microbial surrogates and conservative tracers during controlled experiments with three-dimensional pilot-scale soil treatment systems in the laboratory and during the testing of full-scale systems under field conditions. The surrogates and tracers employed included two viruses (MS-2 and PRD-1 bacteriophages), one bacterium (ice-nucleating active Pseudomonas), and one conservative tracer (bromide ion). Efforts have...
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A substantial amount of laboratory and field research on selenium effects to biota has been accomplished since the national water quality criterion was published for selenium in 1987. Many articles have documented adverse effects on biota at concentrations below the current chronic criterion of 5 microg/L. This commentary will present information to support a national water quality criterion for selenium of 2 microg/L, based on a wide array of support from federal, state, university, and international sources. Recently, two articles have argued for a sediment-based criterion and presented a model for deriving site-specific criteria. In one example, they calculate a criterion of 31 microg/L for a stream with a low...
    map background search result map search result map Why won't they come? Stakeholder perspectives on collaborative national forest planning by participation level. Water-sediment controversy in setting environmental standards for selenium. Global Human Water Stress Water-sediment controversy in setting environmental standards for selenium. Why won't they come? Stakeholder perspectives on collaborative national forest planning by participation level. Global Human Water Stress